Invasion of Blackheart
by EightSixEightSeven
Summary: In the distant future, the people of the Five Systems Alliance will discover a planet with a core of pure dark matter and prepare to mine it as a source of rocket fuel. But they aren't alone in the discovery, and Dalek ships need fuel too...
1. Episode 1

**Doctor Who**

**INVASION OF BLACKHEART**

**By Alex Lee Rankin**

The rattle of a pulse rifle sounded overhead. Like that would be any use. The sound of the familiar and heart-wrenching retaliation followed by a scream told Kirsten that another of her troops had died in battle. The war cry of her enemies chorused above her and she knew they were moving in on her position. The trench was compromised already and the best thing would be to get out. Some had gone already, braving it in No Man's Land, and they'd all been killed as soon as they'd popped up over the edge of the trench's steep bank. Kirsten looked up and saw the flashes of alien blaster fire whizz overhead. Things were hotting up here, and that wasn't a joke about the seething jungle conditions. The sweat plastered her dark red hair to her forehead and soaked through the thin vest she wore almost enough to invite any casual passer-by to view her breasts. It dripped off her nose and fingers and made it difficult to hold her gun despite the absorbent pads that had been affixed to it in order to tackle that problem. Her feet were itching like mad and she wished she didn't have to wear army boots. But that was one of the problems of being in the army, of course; an issue that all soldiers faced.

The events going on above were most definitely not an issue that all soldiers faced. It was rare that situations like this existed in the galaxy and usually when any member of the human race encountered a danger like this it was standard procedure to just get out and leave it, cut one's losses and flee before the enemy decided frying was the best method of cooking a human. Where the hell were the reinforcements? Where the hell were the survival packs, medipacks and weapons upgrades? They desperately needed something that could actually kill these guys. They needed more troops, they needed more time and they needed a way out. Another lightning-bolt of energy flashed overhead and another scream sounded the death of another soldier. This was getting worse. Looking around her, Kirsten found the ranger in the hands of another dead solider, one who had fallen back into the trench after taking a blast as she'd climbed up to go over the top. Poor kid. She looked about sixteen. Kirsten didn't want to think about it. She made her next priority the task of finding out if the ranger was working, and after that using it. She threw the switch and shook the gadget a bit and then looked at the reading. She swore. They were right on top of her. The only way out now would be through the emergency tunnel, and if they found that there wouldn't be much hope. Thankfully Sergeant Elson had come up with a pretty clever idea: to build the tunnel like a narrow tube, narrow enough for humans to wriggle through on their bellies like earthworms but too narrow for the bulks of their enemies to get through, forcing them to dig it out first and thus lose time catching their prey. Harmony was one smart cookie, definitely the brains of the outfit, and a lovely girl too. Kirsten grimaced. One of the problems of a largely matriarchal society was the lack of men in the armed forces. She badly needed a man.

Another spinechilling cry from her enemies shook her back to reality and she ran into the trench hut and faced the handful of soldiers there, all women and young girls. "Emergency tunnel," she panted with as much authority she could muster. "Get moving." When she had been a girl her voice had been sweet and chirpy, her Australian accent lilting more than those of her fellows. Now it was sharper and more bitter, hardened by her weeks of deep combat. She hoped it would one day be sweet again.

Without a word the other girls lifted up the map of No Man's Land and propped it with the little wooden rods they'd made to hold it up, revealing the round hole in the wall. It was about a foot and a half in diameter and four feet from the floor. The smallest girl was bundled in first and the others followed. Kirsten waited until last and then knocked out the supporting rods as she dived in. The map dropped back over the hole, obscuring it from view. That at least would buy them some time to escape, the enemy having to work out where the escape hatch was before actually trying to find their way in, which would also be difficult for them. Difficult, but not impossible. They'd find a way in eventually, and maybe in time to catch the fugitives, and then it would be the chop for them all. And of course they were clever, too. They might've already guessed there would be a tunnel and set motion-sensitive mines in the ground right above its most likely path. Kirsten hoped that she'd chosen a really unlikely path for it, but she wasn't confident. As her sweating, grunting team of girls wriggled through the tunnel, she worried for them. Some of them were just teens, like the poor kid she'd taken the ranger from, and they'd get killed along with the rest if caught. The enemy did not discriminate between the ages of its victims and never ever showed compassion. Kirsten shuddered as she heard the grating voice of one of the monsters a few yards behind her.

"Where are the human females?" the first of the Dalek scouts said as it hovered into the trench, swinging its repulsive bug-eye around, to and fro.

Another floated almost gracefully down behind it. "We must locate their path of escape. There will be an underground tunnel."

The first Dalek was in agreement. "Scan for unstable fissures in the soil," it ordered, marking itself out as the leader of the expedition. "Locate the breach. The human females must not be allowed to present further resistance. They must be exterminated! Exterminated! Exterminated!"

**EPISODE ONE**

"So let me get this straight," said Robin, looking eagerly over the console in the way that a man who had not eaten for a week might look over a very large plate of bangers and mash, swimming in rich onion gravy. "The TARDIS can literally go anywhere, any time. Space isn't a problem either?" He was already fully aware that the TARDIS, recently his new home, could time travel and even move a few blocks down the road, but he had yet to be convinced that a few _planets_ down the road would be as easy. He was still getting over the idea of the TARDIS, along with his sudden discovery that aliens really existed and that there were nice aliens and naughty aliens. Sarah had helped a lot though; she'd told Robin all the tales she could recall of her travels with the Doctor, about how he changed faces from time to time and cheated death by doing so, about his journeys to weird and exotic worlds and his one-man war against evil, picking up stragglers along the way. She'd told him about the monsters too, and while he'd had some experience of the monsters since meeting the Doctor he still did find some of the characters she asked him to believe in a bit far-fetched, if not completely cuckoo. Of course the only way to prove one way or another if bangers and mash are any good would be to take a bite, and that was exactly what he intended to do.

The Doctor flourished in his natural environment, his beaming smile enough to warm even the coldest of hearts and his boyish glee evident in the twinkling of his eyes as he caressed the strange levers and peculiar brass knobs of the Heath Robinson control console. "That's about as straight as it gets, isn't it Sarah?" he cooed.

Sarah-Jane Smith nodded. She had been working with Robin on a freelance contract when their office had become waterlogged and all the staff had been asked to go on holiday while the problem was fixed, and for a while she'd also dated him. They'd chosen after a few blissful months of fun to just be dear friends and that was working out nicely, especially when Sarah had managed to bulldoze Robin into dragging her off on his holiday to America, where she planned to get a good story about a suspicious religious cult which turned out, of course, to be run by aliens hellbent on taking over the world. She was enjoying watching Robin seemingly having a second childhood as he discovered the magic of a new and fascinating toy, and of course watching her dear and cherished old friend the Doctor being equally playful and showing off. It amused her no end. "We've been all over the place," she told Robin for the umpteenth time. "Places, times… they're all a mish-mash in here."

"Is that a technical term, Sarah-Jane?" chuckled the Doctor. "Only if it is it's a new one on me. I shall have to remember it."

"Are we flying…" Robin checked himself. He just couldn't think in the terms that were normal to his late twentieth century human lifestyle. "Are we _travelling_ now? Moving, I mean?"

The Doctor nodded. "You may, if you wish, take it that we are in flight," he announced in his best showman's voice. "Would you like to see the in-flight movie?"

"Is there one?" asked Robin.

"Would I have offered if there weren't?" grinned the Doctor. He slammed a lever down hard and the ceiling above him became suddenly translucent. "_Voila!_" he exclaimed.

Robin looked up in astonishment. The ceiling above seemed to have disappeared, as if the TARDIS were like a convertible sports car and the top had been put down. Beyond his reach lay a million multi-coloured lights set against a dark backdrop patched with shapeless spots of purple and dark blue. There were some orbs in the distance that didn't look familiar – alien planets! "Is that what's outside right now?" he gasped.

The Doctor nodded, looking down at the controls and making a few adjustments. "The fringe worlds of the Five Systems Alliance, Alliance Calendar Year A347, which I'd say is relative to Earth year 3480 or very near it."

"Thirty-four eighty!" Robin gawked. "Wow, you mean we're really in the future?"

"What you'd call the future, yes," the Doctor confirmed. "Being a time traveller on a regular basis gives me a somewhat different perspective. Care to stop off for a bit of sightseeing?"

Sarah stepped in before Robin could answer. "What's the Five Systems Alliance?" she asked. "Some sort of commonwealth for various interplanetary ethnic groups?"

"You get the hang of all this far too quickly, Sarah," tutted the Doctor. "But you're still wrong. The Five Systems Alliance, at this point in its history, is an exclusively human community and aliens tend to be shunned and mistrusted. Perhaps that's a little misguided but it's not without reason. Nearly half a century ago the Alliance only just won a war with a similar interplanetary community of non-humans and it badly damaged their economy. They're recovering well but still need resources to keep their fleets in space."

"Can't Mother Earth help?" asked Robin.

The Doctor opened his mouth, but it was Sarah who answered. "Mother Earth can't do much for anybody right now," she told him. "A few centuries ago Earth was evacuated to save the population from being destroyed by a solar flare strike. There's no one there at the moment, and there won't be a government of any kind for thousands of years." Sarah remembered her visit to Nerva, the curious pastiche of Noah's Ark hanging in space, preserving those who sat out the disaster in deep cryogenic sleep.

"I couldn't have put it better myself," agreed the Doctor, genuinely impressed.

"How the bloody hell does she know?" spluttered Robin.

The Doctor was still poring over the console. He didn't look up. "Oh, she's like me. She was there and remembers everything. Well, she wasn't actually there, on Earth, but she was in the neighbourhood and heard the very well-founded gossip." He decided to elucidate them both further. He enjoyed teaching humans things about the universe. "Of course humans had been going into space since long before then, as I'm sure you'll know, Gagarin and such. By the twenty-eight hundreds there were billions of humans in space, founding little colony worlds on the fringes of the galaxy and building outwards. By the year five thousand of the Earth Calendar they'll be pressed right up against the edge of the Milky Way, and then they'll push through into new galaxies. Histories written thousands of years later will call it the Great Breakout."

"Wow," breathed Robin. "Nice to know my race will go on."

The Doctor hadn't heard. He was continuing his tale. "We're still quite a way inside Mutters Spiral now, and the Five Systems Alliance is exactly what it says on the tin. Space pioneers originally from Australia and New Zealand founded a few colonies on habitable worlds in one small solar system that only contained four planets and one sun, but over the centuries exploration provided four other solar systems, some with the odd habitable planet and others with potential for terraforming."

"Terraforming?" echoed Robin, not sure about the word.

"Making uninhabitable worlds suitable to live on by changing their ecology with whatever technological advances one has to hand," the Doctor explained. "Missiles fired onto the surfaces of dead planets delivered blue-greens and algae which were then accelerated to develop things like water and plants. Water and plants mean oxygen and carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, and then with a few tweaks you can make a lifeless rock into home sweet home." He stepped down from the console dais, seemingly happy with his adjustments. "Then they established colonies there and let them develop. Mineral resources were mined, farms were created, cattle bred and crops grown and in no time at all new economies were developed. At the height of their potential the economies merged with those of the other colony worlds, those already successful, and this would provide the means to launch the next terraforming project and allow Man to branch out. Unfortunately this attracted the attention of the greedy militants nearby and they picked a fight. The Alliance was lucky and escaped by the skin of its teeth."

Robin was getting the idea. "So this Alliance owns five inhabited solar systems," he thought aloud, trying to be very clever. "Do they all have names?"

"Each system was named after the first child born on its first colonised world," the Doctor told him, with a cheerful smile. "The system that houses the Alliance's central government is the Isabella System, and the systems around it are called Rebecca, Guy, Erasmus and Carolyn."

"That's really sweet," nodded Robin. "Which are we in now?"

The Doctor returned to his console. "We're on the outskirts of the Guy System," he said. Suddenly his eyes widened. "And how interesting – a recently terraformed planet. By recently I mean less than a hundred years ago. Actually a mere thirty-eight by the look of it. It'll be primal, but just about ready for a few colonists to start hacking around and at least doing a little scientific research. I'll bet it's absolutely fascinating."

Sarah groaned. "Why is it when you say that I always get the uneasy feeling that we're going to get into quite a lot of trouble?"

"Paranoia?" suggested the Doctor.

"More likely intuition," retorted Sarah. "And of course the fact that I know you well."

The picture on the ceiling disappeared, the façade becoming solid again, and once more the Doctor sprang down from the dais. "Well we've landed anyway. I've run a scan. The atmosphere's breathable, there's plenty of vegetation and it's a hot day, so why don't we all pop out for a picnic?"

**I**

**NO PICNIC**

Colonel Tago jammed the cigar between his teeth, locked it down tight and ripped it from his mouth, spitting the end he had bitten off onto the floor of packed dirt as he lit the remainder of the cheroot. The plume of thick smoke rose into the air and watching it made him feel calmer. His life wasn't easy and he was constantly stressed, the only male officer in a mostly female army occupying Blackheart. That was tougher than going up against the Daleks, he thought to himself with a dry, humourless single laugh. He'd joined up as an act of defiance when he was young, trying to make a political statement and encourage the government to treat the male gender with a bit more respect. On the whole men weren't really disrespected, more like worshipped and cherished because there weren't many to go around and if some of them weren't treated nicely they might decide against taking another wife or donating any sperm, but Tago had wanted a reason to rebel. It was just in his nature. He'd paid for his aggressive urges in full as he'd gone through training, the girls ribbing him and bullying him because he was the only boy. During the final month of training eleven of the girls had even pinned him down and taken it in turns to force themselves upon him. He had hated them for that and laughed at six of them who were stood down from service due to pregnancy. The laughter had stopped very suddenly when one of the senior officers had drawn the obvious conclusion that there could be only one sire to the expected children and had him placed in solitary incarceration for six weeks on the charge of taking advantage of six impressionable girls. There was no way anyone, especially in a matriarchal (and still highly feminist) society, would believe that a boy had been the victim of a sexual attack. That had only made Tago want to fight back harder, and he had done. He'd scraped his way up through the ranks and there had been nothing in the book to say that a male couldn't become an officer in the Alliance Forces or take up a position of authority over females. Having gained the rank of Sergeant Major he'd become a training officer and he'd really enjoyed that. Three years of giving class after class of girls a hard time and showing them that a man could be tough too. He became feared and respected by those below him, but remained resented by those above. It was easier now he'd risen to the rank of Colonel and had peers closer to the top, but still had its moments. Tago was thankful that he himself had once been the trainer of most of the girls on this mission, but perturbed that he hadn't been the trainer of all of them. Kirsten McCarthy's group had broken away, gone guerrilla, and they were the worst. Some of the youngest soldiers in the entire Alliance, whizz-kids who had aced their training and passed out a year or two early, and they were pretty conceited about it. They didn't want to be pushed around by a man, no matter his rank, and they felt that Tago wasn't doing enough against the Daleks. He was doing everything he could and it wasn't enough. Those stupid kids had no idea how difficult his job was, or that even a Colonel couldn't force the Alliance to send more or better supplies for the campaign. If this had been fifty or more years ago, the Colonel thought bitterly, things would be different. The army had been a Man's World then. But of course the war with Nuridia had killed more than nine billion conscripts, most of them men, leaving a large male minority and forcing women to take over. His father had been a conscript in the Nuridian war. Luckily he'd managed to get out of it in one piece and made it home to safety and the arms of a loving wife. Loving her in celebration he had sired a boy, and from the second the child was born his father had known that he was going to have a hard life, a boy growing up in a society that belonged almost exclusively to the girls. He'd wished he had been blessed with a daughter. But he hadn't been, and Bill Tago wasn't going to go under just because he had the wrong genitalia. He'd grown up fast and learned from a young age to be tough. He wasn't going to be bossed around by a lot of silly girls. It had made something of a misogynist of him, even though all in all he'd done his best to like them. He still desired women, still found them attractive, even secretly (and exclusively to himself) admitted that he'd fancied one or two of the soldiers in some of the patrols he'd taken out recently. Usually the ones who didn't come back. He didn't really hate women deep down. He liked them a lot. And that was the trouble: liking people who were too arrogant to like him. At least they took his orders. That wasn't a power-kick for him; he needed the troops to be loyal and obedient if the Alliance was going to beat the Daleks without the same consequences that came with beating the Nuridians.

"Tago!" a voice called urgently from behind him and he heard booted feet running in his direction. It didn't bother him that no one called him 'Colonel Tago' or 'sir' really. As long as they took orders and got on with the job.

He turned to face the woman jogging up to him. She was less butch than most of them, had good child-bearing hips, full, firm breasts, long legs and a firm, flat stomach. She wore the usual tight, unrestricted combat slacks that everyone wore and the usual sweat-absorbing vest that didn't do much of a good job. She'd cut her vest below the chest and torn it away so that her stomach and lower back were exposed, and she'd cut the vest straps off too and affixed safety pins at the back of the simple horizontal strip that now covered her chest to hold it tightly in place. Her dark brown hair the Colonel knew was long and straight, but she'd pushed it all up and tied it in a braided bun. She wore no makeup, but a face like hers didn't need it. Dark blue eyes seemed to hide all her secrets but one, giving away the warm, compassionate woman behind the tough exterior. Or maybe Tago was just fantasising that such a woman existed in there somewhere. "What is it, Steel?"

Commander Steel stopped and caught her breath. "We just got a call-in from Lieutenant McCarthy's patrol," she informed him.

"They've been missing eight weeks and they decide to call in now?" Tago was surprised. "How the hell are they even alive with no supplies or power packs?"

Steel shrugged. "Must be living off the land."

Tago scowled at her. "I know there are plenty of fruits and vegetables to survive on out there, Kasan, and I'm sure that makes McCarthy and her cronies pretty regular troops. But where are they getting their power? If they're snatching the DM I'll have their hides!"

"If the Daleks don't first," agreed Steel, preferring to expedite argument in favour of dispensing the crucial information she possessed. "They've broken through the Hard Line."

Tago went white and almost spat out his cigar. "What?" he coughed. "Oh Jesus! Get back inside. Tell the troops to power up the MAARV and get moving. Looks like we're about to become the new HardLiners."

Steel gawked. "We can't set up a new Hard Line this far back," she protested. "Tago, we'd have no chance. You've got to see that!"

"Do it, Kasan!" Tago growled. "That's an order. No questions, no arguments. Just get that machine on the move. Radio McCarthy and tell her to do as she's told for once and hold her position, for her own damn good."

"She's already broken contact."

"She would. Typical. Well if we can't get a fix on the last known position of the Daleks from her we'll just have to set up the line as far out as we dare and wait for them to come to us."

"And then what?" demanded Steel.

"Die, probably," nodded Tago, puffing on his cigar. "Unless we get ourselves a miracle. Now do as you're told and get your arse back in that dome. I want that MAARV fired up and ready to move by the time I've finished this cigar."

Steel glanced at the cigar. Like time, and the line of defence, it was receding rapidly. She turned and ran back into the camp dome.

Tago turned his back to her, leaving her to get on with it while he finished his cheroot. First McCarthy and now her. He sighed. Women.

Millions upon millions of miles away, on a planet that everyone called Keystone because it was the centre of the Alliance and the source of its strength and stability, in a city called Foundation because it was the first city ever to be built by human settlers in this part of the galaxy, there stood a building. The Parliament Building, Four Seasons Square, Foundation. Everyone knew it and tourists from around Keystone and also from the other Alliance worlds often came to see it. There was hardly anyone in the Alliance who didn't own a photograph of Four Seasons Square and fewer still who hadn't seen one. Kids learned about it in school. Once the Sleeper Ships had landed and the computers had thawed out the crews and compliments, the Pioneers of Old Earth stepped out onto their new world and found it lush and green. The computers had been designed to scan for atmospheric conditions that were suitable to sustain human life. There were plenty of planets in the galaxy where things similar to humans had once lived and either died out or moved on, or planets where there lived primates of a similar type to those believed to have evolved into humans, allowing for the possibility that the primates of these worlds may one day do as much. In any case, habitable but uncivilised worlds had been found and the Sleeper Ships had settled there. The Pioneers began to build the first town, and they worked all year round. The years were a little shorter on Keystone and the calendar was changed to suit them, but it was a comfort to the Pioneers that there were still four seasons to a year and each similar to the seasons of Old Earth. In honour of the discovery they named the first street Four Seasons Square and it was the first street in the first town in the first city in the first continent of the first planet ever colonised by Man in this sector. That's why the Parliament Building was erected there, government being essential in a new civilisation. The building was tall and cube-shaped, mostly silver and white in colour, built from the remains of the first Sleeper Ship, cut up for precisely that purpose. A means to remind everyone of where they came from. There were rows of windows and a large circular main entrance alcove, once an airlock, filled in at the end of its passage and set with a traditional front door.

Parliament, as usual, was in session. There were a few mumblers at the back and quite a bit of shouting near the front, and the woman who stood in the Speaker's Booth was not being heard. She pressed the button and the fierce Order Bell shrilled, silencing everyone in the Council Room. The woman took a breath. "May I remind you all," she said firmly into her microphone, the powerful speakers and amplifier distributing her voice to the room, "that our fuel situation becomes more critical every day and that we need as many resources as can be mined within our territory. Our Alliance's development depends upon it. How, tell me, if we cannot fuel our starships, can we take freighters to the Frontier Wing and engage our fellow humans in other colonies in trade? How can we encourage immigration and tourism? How can we keep our battle fleets and patrols in space and maintain our defence? Already the situation is precarious and we have only God and blind luck to thank that Nuridia stands too weak to launch a second campaign. If this crisis continues for much longer she could regain her strength in the time she's afforded and within ten years we could receive a revenge bombing from a squadron of Kadiazi StrikeCruisers. The bombing that would begin not a war, but a massacre. In war, both sides have a chance."

The Councillors shouted and roared, some in assent, some in protest. Someone rang the bell and stood up as everyone else quietened. The small, skinny woman was hard-faced and high-cheekboned from cosmetic surgery, an old woman trying to look like a young woman because she was only just still fertile and worried that she might have no more children if she could not make herself appealing to men quickly. She wasn't making much of a job of it, even with the cosmetic enhancement, the bottle-blonde hair and the youth fashions that looked ridiculous on a woman her age, who _was_ her age and couldn't hide it even with the most expensive surgery. "Administrator Chairman," she sneered into her microphone. The old name had stuck even though women had taken over. "Fuel, as protesters have quite rightly stated, is too expensive, and mining more is becoming costly in more ways than one. I understand that the Blackheart project has encountered some difficulty and already a military presence has been established on the planet."

How the hell did she know that? It was classified data! Audrey Stockman was seething. If she found out who had committed this security breach she would string them up for treason herself, in person no less! There would have to be an investigation, but in the meantime she would be forced to answer the challenge. She sighed heavily. "There has been an attack carried out on Blackheart by unknown aggressors," she nodded. "We've received a number of communiqués from our forces on the planet's surface who have described small armoured vehicles that may or may not be piloted by remote control attempting to secure the planet for their own purposes."

"New Nuridian technology?" asked the sneering little bitch on the front bench. "A breakthrough for the Tjangrasi and a means to sneak into our territory and attack without risking their own lives, perhaps?"

The ministers started to rumble.

"There is no similarity between the technology being used by the aggressors on Blackheart and any resource ever used by Nuridia," Stockman insisted. "And there is no point, Speaker Binns, in causing anxiety and paranoia in our parliament or in our people. If you continue to do so you will be removed from office and incarcerated."

Binns shrugged off the threat. "A new threat then, Chairman? An attacker not weakened like the Nuridians? An attacker fully-equipped and staffed, armed and armoured and powerful enough to wipe us all out? And if they get Blackheart and the fuel they'll be able to hold us to ransom and enslave us all! Given the choice I'd advise you to hope you're wrong about it not being Nuridia."

"Hmmm," the Doctor mused, still standing in the TARDIS doorway, half-in and half-out, allowing the dimensional displacement to tickle him a bit. It always felt good. "Not the best picnic spot, I admit. Looks like a tropical rainforest, minus the rain. We're probably due some quite soon though."

Sarah gave him a shove and emerged from behind him as he tumbled out. "Let's have a look, then," she said, hopping down from the Ship as she became aware it was standing on something, about a foot off the ground. "Careful as you come out, Robin!" she called.

Robin poked his head out of the door and looked around. There were leaves everywhere, sprouting from everything, massive and diverse in shape and texture, some like plastic, some like leather, some green, some yellow and some bright purple! It was amazing. He caught his breath as he took it in and carefully stepped out. "Whoa," he breathed. "This is unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it? I've been on Safari in the Amazonian jungle but this is… whoa!" He yelled as he slipped, having forgotten to heed Sarah's warning and tumbled off the surface upon which the TARDIS stood to end up flat on his face on the soil. He picked himself up and turned back to face the blue box. It sat precariously atop an enormous deep pink fungus. "It's a toadstool," he gasped. "It's a giant fucking toadstool!"

The Doctor winced. "Robin, what have I told you about using that sort of language?" he demanded in a slightly patronising manner. "I'm not going to take you travelling with me any more if you're going to be rude."

"Sorry Doctor," Robin answered sheepishly. "I'll rein it in."

"Yes, please do," said the Doctor and he started poking around in the foliage. "Looks like there are some fascinating species here. It'd be quite interesting to stick around for a while and study them, if you two wouldn't mind…"

He was interrupted by a flash overhead and Sarah shouting, "Look out!" Instinctively the Doctor dived and rolled, only to see the TARDIS, hit by an energy bolt, tip off the giant toadstool and slam down onto the soil. It missed him by mere inches. More bolts flew overhead and he sat up to look for their source.

A woman appeared from amongst the thick, drooping leaves of a tall tree, pointing a fierce-looking blaster at them. "Shit," said Robin, feeling despite the Doctor's warnings the time had come for a good old swearword. "We're trespassing."

The Doctor gathered himself up. "Hello, Jane!" he called to the near-naked armed woman. "Do you mind if we speak to Tarzan, or isn't he at home?"

"It's all right!" the woman called, but not to the Doctor's party. She was shouting further up into the trees. "They're not Daleks."

The Doctor and Sarah said it at the same time, both feeling their blood chill in their veins.

"Daleks?"

The Dalek ship hung silently in space, its engines stopped and only its drift compensation stabilisers working to hold it in place just outside of Blackheart's orbit. Inside the control room, silent but for the punctuation of a steady, rhythmic almost heartbeat-like thump that came from the standard Dalek design power generators, the Mission Commander waited. It was different from the other Daleks. The other Daleks, but for a few that also were designated for specific tasks, had the usual livery of silver-grey bodywork with blue hemispheres, and the Mission Commander was matte black and its hemispheres were red. Had it had legs any human being might've mistaken it for a deadly tarantula, although the analogy wouldn't be too far away from the truth. It heard the clank and whirr of the metal door to the control room opening behind it and turned its domed head, swinging the eye-stalk in the direction of the door as if to point at it. A Dalek was coming through, an ordinary Dalek, silver and blue, but its radio signals identifying it as one of the personnel from the Communications and Scanning deck. It would not be here unless it had new information that it considered important to the mission. "Report," the Mission Commander ordered.

"The six human females who have the compressor have been located by our long-range sensor scans of the surface," it reported. "They have established a base of operations beneath the surface one point nine kilometres from the current location of patrol one three five nine."

"Order patrol one three five nine to locate the humans, retrieve the compressor and then exterminate them," the Mission Commander replied, considering that to be a satisfactory solution to the problem. "Return the compressor to the mining unit and increase defence around it."

"I obey," said the Communications Dalek. Then it added, "There has also been a localised time distortion in the area, close to the edge of the sector. Scans have tracked it but it was lost inside the planet's orbit. This indicates a materialisation."

The Mission Commander knew what it indicated. It knew all too well. "Was the signature of the time vehicle analysed?"

"It is Gallifreyan in origin," confirmed the Communications Dalek.

The Mission Commander's voice changed tone slightly, seeming to take on the attributes of a panicked shriek. "Prepare to land on the planet's surface and take up defensive positions!" It didn't wait for its subordinate to accept the order and leave, swinging its eye stalk instead to its own communications system and sending the signal to activate it. "Mission Commander to Dalek High Command, Serithia!" it screeched. "Emergency! Emergency! Incursion of Gallifreyan time capsule observed in this locality. Reinforcements are required. It is the Doctor. The Doctor is a threat to the Daleks. He must be exterminated as soon as possible! Emergency!"

**II**

**HARDLINERS**

The girl dropped out of the tree and Robin watched her with unhidden fascination. She was petite and slender, a little smaller than Sarah, and her body was toned and athletic. She didn't wear any makeup but her heart-shaped face was pretty, her eyes large and round and bright green. Her hair was a dark auburn colour and roughly pinned up apart from where the sweat stuck it to her skin. She wasn't wearing much: a torn vest-top that had once been white but was now streaked with dirt, soaked with sweat and practically transparent, a pair of figure-hugging dark green slacks made of a stretchy synthetic like Spandex or something that were also quite badly ripped and army boots. She cradled the gleaming rifle in her arms, slung by its strap over her shoulder, but kept it pointed down. Robin glanced up at the sound of rustling leaves and could make out movement in the trees. Others were coming down. The girl stood a couple of feet away from the Doctor's party. "Breeders," she exclaimed suddenly, as if surprised.

Robin was taken slightly aback. "Pardon me?"

She glanced him up and down. "Couple of nice lookers, too." She laughed just a little. Her laughter was accompanied by more from the trees and also a couple of crude wolf-whistles. The first girl threw up her head. "All right, girls. Calm it down." She looked again at Robin, this time more aggressively. "Don't even know who they are yet. They could be Dalek agents."

The Doctor got up and brushed the back of his coat with his hand to get any flakes of dried soil off it onto the ground below where they'd come from. His look was equally aggressive. "I assure you we're not," he said sharply. "Daleks are bad company."

The woman raised an eyebrow, surprised. "You've heard of them?"

"Better than that," replied the Doctor. "I've destroyed quite a few Daleks in my time. I make a habit of it. I take it you'd not heard of them before they arrived here?"

She ignored the question. "Destroyed them? How?"

"There are ways and means," said the Doctor.

"Is that why you're here?" asked the girl, seeming desperate for a ray of hope.

The Doctor saw no harm in a white lie providing one, and it would ironically be more likely to be believed than the truth. "My ship detected Dalek activity in the area. I came to investigate."

The girl's eyes widened. "There are Dalek hunters in the galaxy?" she almost squealed. "They sent you to save Blackheart?"

"That's right," the Doctor lied a little more, worrying about how far he'd have to go to gain this girl's trust.

"Where are you from?" the girl asked.

More lies. The Doctor concealed his discomfort well. It would not be wise in these times of xenophobia to admit that he was an alien, or indeed that Robin and Sarah come from Old Earth, no life touching the soil there for centuries by this time. He took advantage of the fact that he and both his companions sported what any human would call English accents unlike the staple Antipodean ones that would be found in this part of space. "Nerva," he said cheerfully. No one here would know, as he did, that the Nerva Programme had hit a glitch by this time and its sleepers still slept.

The girl laughed. "The old British 'traditional' human preservation programme? That worked?"

"Don't look so surprised," Sarah chipped in, picking up the Doctor's game and playing it. "We British are actually very resourceful. We've survived all over the galaxy."

"Precisely," the Doctor agreed. "And we've seen more Dalek attacks than you've had hot dinners. We can help you to defeat your invaders."

"Okay," the girl finally sighed. "Come on out, you lot!" she shouted. "Looks like we've got allies."

Five more girls dropped from the trees, all as barely-dressed as this one, all armed with the nasty-looking weapons and all, as far as Robin could see, sexy as hell. He was suddenly worried about his blood pressure going up, especially in the tropical environment. "Um…" he managed to blurt out with more effort than he'd expected. "Do we do the introductions now?"

"Kirsten," said the first girl. "McCarthy. Supposed to be Lieutenant McCarthy, but we're deserters, I'm afraid. We're not traitors or anything. We just don't have much confidence in our commanding officer. Breeder, you see." Quickly she glanced at Robin and the Doctor and checked herself. "No offence."

"None taken," the Doctor smiled. "How d'you do, Kirsten. I'm the Doctor, this is Sarah-Jane Smith and Robin Baxter."

Kirsten was surprised yet again. "Doctor? Wow, we don't get a lot of male techies this side of the galaxy either. You gonna invent something that'll blow up the Daleks for us?"

"I have every intention of doing exactly that," the Doctor agreed.

Kirsten pointed out her troops. "Sergeant Harmony Elson, Lance Corporal Cara Ryland, Troopers Helen Dean, Josephine Marshall and Samantha Cort. Renegade Patrol Six, everyone's calling us."

Robin chuckled. "More like the Dirty Half Dozen."

Kirsten smiled at him and gave a slightly immature giggle as she looked at her clothes. "Yeah, we do get a bit grimy out here." She glanced at her comrades. "Get a tent, will you somebody? We'll camp here for a bit." She spotted someone scurrying off to obey the order and looked at Robin. "Can get these clothes off and have a wash then," she grinned wickedly.

"Ur, that wasn't quite what I meant," Robin smirked. "No matter." He was fighting to keep his eyes off the ring of stunning girls that gathered around the TARDIS, looking down at the peculiar cuboid as it lay in the dirt. One of them prodded it with her foot.

"Do you mind?" protested the Doctor. "She may look sturdy but inside she's very sensitive."

"I sometimes wish I could say the same for us," said the girl who had kicked the box. Harmony Elson was the smallest of all the girls in the platoon, standing a mere four feet and eleven inches, and she was less developed that the others too, showing very little sign of any of the lumps under the vest that the rest of the squad proudly sported. "But we seem hardened to the core. I hope it's not permanent."

The Doctor smiled kindly at her. She looked like a child. Her hands were small, her face was round and her eyes were large. Her hair was black and only just collar-length and she had dyed a pink streak into the small right-bearing fringe she had, a defiant cry of femininity in the butch military world she had come to inhabit. "You're a little young to be in the army, aren't you?"

"I'm twenty-three," said Harmony, glancing at her vest. "Yeah, when the good Lord was handing out tits I must've been reading comics or something. Doctors call it a hormone deficiency. I call it a bloody inconvenience. I can't find a breeder who'll have me because they all think I'm a kid!"

"I'm sure you'll find someone," the Doctor said cheerfully.

Harmony disbelieved it but didn't want to upset the breeder. He was handsome and quite wise. Maybe he'd take her if she treated him with respect and warmth. Maybe she could talk to him some more later, find out if he had any wives or children. She wanted children. It made her ache. She tried not to think about it, looked at the blue box. "So what's in here?"

"Equipment," said the Doctor, neither lying nor telling the entire truth. "And an information system. I use what's in here to help me with finishing off the Daleks."

"Wow," beamed Harmony. "What weapons have you got?"

"Nothing conventional. No guns or bombs or anything. There aren't many conventional weapons that would do much damage to a Dalek."

Harmony blew up her fringe a little. "Tell me about it," she grunted. "Our guns don't even scratch them. Hey, if you've got no actual weapons, what do you do?"

The Doctor grinned. "Improvise, largely," he told her. "Now, I wonder if you could help me stand her up again, quick as you were to knock her down?"

The girls couldn't help the handsome breeder fast enough.

Leaving the Doctor to his plan-brewing and Robin to his ogling, Sarah-Jane set about looking around the small copse or glade or whatever it was the TARDIS had landed in. She wasn't really interested in the lithe, hard bodies of the athletic young ladies and she was less interested still in their primary desire apparent to impress the men. She was better than that. No, she thought gruffly, you don't see me stripping down and offering to help the boys. I'm not all tights and big breasts, am I? Some women have a bit more self-respect than that. The idea of a matriarchal society appealed to her in a big way, but not if it meant men would still be more important and more revered than women. Female dominance in that situation would be something of a Pyrrhic victory. Sarah was by now more interested in the fact that these girls had said that they were deserters and had mutinied against their commanding officer, and her self-drawn conclusion that the CO and his troops would be nearby. She knew the CO would be a man from Kirsten referring to him as a breeder, signifying the importance of men for procreation, but there would be more female troops and perhaps these would be more like Sarah's kind of girls. Also it worried her that there were Daleks on this planet and while she trusted the Doctor to fight hard and give the metal monsters what was coming to them, she was concerned that he, Robin, herself and these six girls wouldn't be enough to put up a good fight. Edging around the giant pink toadstool to get out of sight, Sarah chose not to say anything to the Doctor or Robin. They'd only argue and try to find some way to stop her going. Human or non-human, men rarely knew what was for their own good.

The corrugated iron doors of the old Geology and Survey Unit rattled back and the MAARV rumbled out on its heavy-duty caterpillar tracks, the twin guns mounted either side of its main turret charging and locking, ready for action. It was the most powerful piece of weaponry they had and as such their last resort, their commanders telling them not to use it until there was no other option. All other options by now had been exhausted and the MAARV was needed. It was developed for all-terrain combat in any conditions and even had an artificial intelligence primed to take over and fight to the bitter end in the event that the crew should all be killed. Manoeuvres, Artillery Assault and Reconnaissance Vehicle, that was the original name; MAARV to save people getting shot before finishing ordering or authorising its use. The turret twisted clockwise and anti-clockwise, its weapons swinging around and bashing leaves aside as it charged off the concrete square that housed the GSU and into the jungle. Inside, clustered together in the cramped space, Bill Tago and his assault squad braced themselves for what might well be their final confrontation with the dreaded Daleks.

"A vehicle is moving on the surface," a Dalek reported from its control console at the helm of the spaceship. "Bearing approximately one hundred and four degrees from Polar North. It is armed."

The Mission Commander turned its head to point its beastly eye stalk at the one that had reported the news of the vehicle. "Estimated threat?"

The Helm Dalek pressed its feeler to the scanner controls and lowered its eyepiece, scrutinising the highly specific readings. "Level Seven strength polymer armour," it read. "Dual ion cannons, micro-relay scramblers, six grenade launchers with low-level fission grenades." It looked up at the Mission Commander. "It is restricted to surface travel but highly manoeuvrable and sufficiently armed to destroy our surface patrol."

"Destroy it," said the Mission Commander. "We will not allow these humans to be a threat. The Dark Matter at the planet's core belongs to the Daleks."

The Helm Dalek charged the long-range plasma cannons and called up a hologram display on a screen in front of it. A crosshair appeared and the Dalek locked its own personal computer into the target guidance system for efficiency and accuracy. The two computers worked in tandem, sharing everything, locking in codes and executing programs. In seconds the screen's view zoomed in and through the leaves could make out a kind of tank rolling through the foliage. The crosshair jittered around the screen and then fixed on the tank and stayed on it. The Dalek opened fire and turned the MAARV to dust.

"Jesus!" Kirsten squeaked and rolled off Robin. She fumbled around the floor of the tent for her clothes and started pulling them back on.

Robin was also a little shaken. He sat up and covered his nakedness with the excess of the opened-up sleeping bag. He had heard the explosion too. "What the hell was that?"

Kirsten scowled. "How do I know?" she snapped. Then she saw his crestfallen look. "I'm sorry. We'll do this later, okay?"

Robin nodded. "Sure. Maybe we can find out what happened."

Another of the soldiers burst into the tent. The one that looked like a little girl. "There's a massive spaceship up in the stratosphere and coming down fast!" she blurted out. "It fired some kind of weapon at the surface. It hit near the old Geo-bunker and there was a pink flame."

Pink. The colour of the explosion made by ion-stream inducer engines when massively overheated, and there could only be one ISI drive on Blackheart. "They've blown up the MAARV," Kirsten confirmed Harmony's fears. "Looks like I'm the highest authority here now. Where's the Doctor?"

"Still in his box thing," Harmony said. "He said he was going to sort out something he could use against the Daleks."

Kirsten marched out of the tent, her clothing clinging to what little of her body it could, and banged on the TARDIS door. "Doctor, we've got trouble!" she shouted. "The Daleks are landing their spaceship and it looks like it can outstrip anything we've got. We're dead if we don't move fast."

It was too late. Someone shouted a warning from a tree. "Daleks at six twenty-five!"

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS. "What?" he asked, looking up. The colour suddenly drained from his face. "Oh no."

Silver shapes were gliding across the orange sky, powerful nodes underneath the familiar shapes glowing bright blue, eye-stalks and blaster-sticks pointing menacingly down. They were unmistakable: a slightly more advanced design than most he'd seen, but still the same old Daleks. They'd even restored their ancient traditional livery of silver-grey bodywork with blue hemispheres, though a slightly darker shade of blue these days. "Human females will surrender!" grated the Dalek at the head of the party.

The Doctor waved blithely to the beasts. "I don't think that was part of the plan," he called.

The Dalek had scanned him in less than a second. Two hearts. Artron energy signature. All that and standing right in front of a blue box that registered in all Dalek records as the avatar of a certain space-time vehicle. "It is the Doctor!" shrieked the lead Dalek. "Exterminate!"

All the Daleks' guns pointed at the Doctor.

_**To be continued…**_


	2. Episode 2

Long, heavy winds swept clouds of ashes across the nuclear wastes of Skaro obscuring the amber sun during its brief periods of emergence from behind either stifling chemical clouds or the tall mountains that ranged along the rear of the Old City. The City had been the home of the Daleks for millennia, and for a period the only one that they knew. But they had branched out so many times now, creeping across the galaxies like a deadly weed plant, like the varga plants that lived on their world with their deadly thorns, crept over rocks and small hills. They had swept across a fair portion of the universe in a wave of violent destruction, killing, enslaving and conquering, building their empire. They had created Serithia, their second home, a new galaxy born from the ashes of one the Daleks themselves had destroyed. They had set up a new power base there and were using its resources to build newer, better Dalek travel machines, newer, better spacecraft and newer, better weapons already. So many of the fledglings had flown the nest now, but the nest was still there, a dark, sinister and eerie sphere, the true home of the Daleks.

Once upon a time, a great and powerful enemy of the Daleks had thought Skaro destroyed and by, in a way, his own Hand, but it had been folly and vanity on his part. The Daleks knew of his devious ways and had made provision for the possibility that their enemy might attempt to booby-trap the weapon stolen from him by their creator and turn it upon their home. They had created a dummy planet and moved Skaro to a different position by way of its core engine, moving it back when the dust had settled. But it was only by the Dalek Prime's stroke of genius in coming up with the decoy idea that had saved the planet. The Dalek Prime now glided around the main control room at the heart of the City, the separate segments of its bulbous spherical golden head turning, allowing its eye-stalk to move around as did those of the lesser Daleks, so that it could see what was going on. It had stopped for a moment, taking interest in a message from Serithia. There had been a discovery just inside the Mutters Spiral galaxy, a planet hosting a handful of human settlers had registered on spectrographic scanners to have a core of almost pure Dark Matter. Dark Matter was very good: a highly fissile mineral that made excellent spaceship fuel. The Dalek Prime flicked through the conversation between the Mission Commander of the Dalek ship sent to investigate this planet and recover the mineral in whole and the Supreme Dalek in Serithia. It read that the Commander had sent a surface party of five Daleks to the surface by transmat. These Daleks had located the human settlers – a mere geological survey group checking out the ground – and destroyed them. But apparently in response to this action the humans in a nearby solar system had sent a military force. That force posed no serious threat according to the Commander but then scans had come in to indicate that the humans had acquired the assistance of the Doctor and the Mission Commander had requested reinforcements. The Dalek Prime considered the issue. The Dark Matter certainly was valuable, but was it valuable enough to risk a fleet of ships just to collect the core of one single solitary planet? The Doctor, though he was only one mere organic humanoid with a few basic advantages, could be dangerous at times and was certainly to be taken seriously as a threat. He was an extremist, a terrorist – a mass-murderer. He had killed, or assisted in killing, thousands upon thousands of Daleks. Whole occupation forces had been wiped out by this one unit of flesh, blood and bone with little or no proper weaponry. The Dalek Prime elected to contact the Supreme in Serithia and deny the reinforcements. It was worth risking one ship and crew for and no more. The Mission Commander would be given full levy to do whatever it felt necessary to secure the planet, and if it exterminated the Doctor, or else the Doctor was successfully exterminated by its order, then it would be Supreme Dalek as its reward, setting itself up as master of the solar systems that it could invade once it possessed the Dark Matter. If it failed then it would die fighting the Doctor and be recorded in history as a brave warrior, an example of Dalek stamina.

**EPISODE TWO**

"No!" Robin shouted, bursting out of the tent wearing only his jeans as a bolt of energy burst from the lead Dalek's weapon and streaked toward the Doctor. Some of the women were rushing about too, largely in panic. The energy beam from the Dalek gun found a target – the wrong target – and there was a scream as the body lit up and for a moment seemed translucent, the bones and internal organs momentarily visible as if the target were being X-rayed. Girls scurried for cover and a chorus of retaliating fire ripped out of their weapons, glancing ineffectually off the Daleks' metal-plated hides. Robin stared down at the smoking corpse of tiny Harmony Elson. "She was just a kid," he stammered, near to tears. He turned and shouted at the Daleks. "She was just a bloody kid!"

"Silence," barked the lead Dalek. "Or you also will be exterminated."

"Nobody is exterminating anyone," the Doctor snapped sharply. "You could've killed everyone here in a matter of seconds, me included, and you didn't. You'd worked it all out first and you knew someone else would, however accidentally, take the blow for me. Oh, you think you're very clever confidence tricksters, but you also know that I'm the Doctor, and as such am not easy to fool. So why haven't you killed me? You want to and it's in your standing orders. Go on. Shoot me!"

The Dalek hovered silently in the air. Neither it nor any of its compatriots reacted.

"They want the compressor," said Kirsten. "And like the rest of us, you might know where it's hidden. They can't risk killing us all because they might have to dig up this whole planet just to find it, and in the time it could take them to do that, we could just launch a planet-cracker and turn this rock into a black hole, squash 'em flat like we did the Nuridians."

The Doctor had visited the Alliance in his fifth incarnation, during the war with Nuridia, and accidentally (and rather regretfully) helped the Allied Forces to turn a moon into a black hole that destroyed the entire Nuridian army. The war had been terrible and it seemed that these humans had not learnt their lesson and would gladly unleash such devastation again. Though admittedly on the Daleks its use could be forgiven. But what was the compressor, and was that what all the killing was over? He needed to know. "Compressor?" he asked Kirsten.

"This planet's called Blackheart, Doctor," she told him. "Did you know that?"

The Doctor shook his head. "I didn't know that," he told her earnestly. "Why such an emotive and dystopic name?"

"Descriptive, actually. This used to be a dead rock. We terraformed it. Then we sent a scientific survey group to the surface to check it over, see if we had anything we could exploit here. They found out most of the planet's core is near-pure Dark Matter. Only the Daleks found that out too and there's been a bit of a barney going on about who saw it first."

The Doctor was getting the picture. "They came here with a mass-state compressor, because Dark Matter is extremely heavy," he said. "The compressor, unless I'm very much mistaken, temporarily inverts the mass of an object to make the object lighter and easier to carry and transport. With the right level of compression they could ostensibly shift the planet's entire core in one spaceship in one trip."

"You are correct, Doctor," said the lead Dalek. "These females stole the compressor. If they do not return it our mining operations cannot continue."

The Doctor grinned. He had an advantage at last. "Well why don't you just pop home and get another one? I assume your local store stocks spares?"

"We do not have enough fuel to return to Serithia," said the Dalek. "Our orders are to secure the Dark Matter here and use some as fuel for our return. Also, if we were to leave, by the time of our return the humans could have delivered more defences to the planet or else taken the Dark Matter for themselves."

"Sounds a very sloppy operation to me," the Doctor tutted.

"Silence, Doctor!" ordered the Dalek. "We still may carry out our orders and exterminate you."

"But I might know where the compressor is."

"If you know, then we do not need any of these humans and we can exterminate them all."

"If you do that, I won't tell you where the compressor is."

"We will extract the information using the Mind Analysis Machine."

That worried the Doctor. He had a strong mind and could resist most probes, but a Dalek Mind Analysis Machine was a different matter altogether. He wasn't sure what to say.

He didn't need to say anything. Kirsten stepped in front of him. "If we give you the compressor, will you let us go?"

"We only require the Dark Matter," said the Dalek. "You are of no importance to us. Return the compressor and we will allow you all to leave. The Doctor however must be exterminated."

"No deal," said Kirsten. "You let us all go, the Doctor too. Agree and you can have the compressor."

"I will confer with the Mission Commander," the Dalek answered. "Wait." It was silent for a few moments, using its internal communications system, Dalek-to-Dalek only. "It is agreed," it announced finally. "There will be other opportunities to exterminate the Doctor. You may all leave in his TARDIS while we retrieve the compressor."

Kirsten looked at the Doctor. "TARDIS?"

The Doctor jerked a thumb toward the box behind him. "I'm afraid I was dishonest with you. I'm from an advanced alien culture and this is a sophisticated spacecraft."

Kirsten hadn't time to react. The Dalek floated down in front of her, its eye-stalk fixed on the centre of her face as if unsure which eye to look into. "Where is the compressor?" it demanded.

"We all get inside this ship and I'll broadcast the location via communicator," said Kirsten.

"Unacceptable," said the Dalek. "If you are inside the TARDIS you can escape without giving the information. We require a hostage."

One of the other Daleks piped up. "There is another human female here," it said, angling its plunger arm down to the ground. Paralysed by a Dalek stun weapon but conscious and weeping, Sarah-Jane Smith sat on the big pink toadstool.

"This female is the Doctor's companion," the lead Dalek said. "There are records of her on Skaro. She will make a suitable hostage." It looked at the Doctor. "We will hold this female. You will get inside the TARDIS and give us the location of the compressor. Do not attempt to lie. We will scan the coordinates you give us and if the compressor is not detected we will exterminate her."

The Doctor nodded, ashen-faced. "All right," he sighed. "We agree." He looked at Robin and the soldiers. "Into the TARDIS."

Robin gaped at him. "But you can't leave Sarah to…"

"IN!" shouted the Doctor.

Robin gave no further argument. He went in with the girls.

**III**

**ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER**

The deception had worked.

The entire compliment of the MAARV's cramped cabin breathed a sigh of relief as the plume of pink smoke rose into the orange sky, clashing horribly, and Colonel Tago checked the computer. "The Dalek spacecraft's still overhead," he announced to his crew. "Should be clear of our position in about six minutes. They'll need to raze the section of jungle they want to land in because they won't be able to settle the ship properly on all the trees, and that should buy us time, not a lot of time, but maybe long enough to take a few measures."

Steel reached over to check the computer too, and Tago turned his face away from her armpit as she punched in a couple of commands. "I think I can predict where they'll land," she told the Colonel.

"Then get on with it, Commander," Tago snapped. "That'll make our job a lot easier."

Running her long fingers over the command panel and staring at the screen, she tracked the path of the Dalek ship as it began to reduce its speed and altitude. She ran her customised trajectory prediction program and waited a few seconds. "Got her," she announced. "One five-hundred. That's about twenty minutes east of here."

"Twenty?" Tago shouldered her out of the way and grabbed the computer for himself, battering its keyboard with a haste to fit the urgency of the situation. He stopped and looked up at Steel, his eyes aglow. "We can do it, Kasan!" he gasped. "It should only take eleven minutes to get there and another four to install it."

"We'd be cutting it a bit fine," mused Steel. "Would we make it out in time?"

"We'll think about that when the time comes," grunted Tago. "It's our only chance."

Steel scowled at him. "Tago, if you want to run a suicide mission against the Daleks then you can bloody well run it on your own. We don't all have a death wish."

He glanced up at her. "May I remind you, Kasan," he said quietly and patiently, confident of his sure point against her argument, "that we're all dead anyway if this doesn't work? We're only recently, and not very well, acquainted with the Daleks, but experience has already taught us they don't take prisoners and don't show mercy. Do you think if you put your hands up and swear you had nothing to do with the attack they'd let you go?"

Steel hung her head. "I was being stupid, sir," she said. "Ready when you are."

Sir. About time.

The Mission Commander was unsatisfied. It was _very_ unsatisfied. The Dalek Prime had interceded with the Supreme Dalek at Serithia, ordering that no reinforcements would be sent to Blackheart, but also no order had been given to pull out of the mission. The Dalek Prime was risking the Mission Commander, its ship and crew, on an even chance of success or failure just because it was concerned that the Doctor might get a foothold and win out in the end. The Mission Commander was being used. It did not like it. But Daleks obeyed orders; that was the way they operated, every Dalek cooperating in order to make each mission as successful as possible. Admittedly, due to its unflagging obedience, the Mission Commander did have a positively glittering service record. It had, like everyone else, been a drone when the young mutant, freshly hatched and programmed, had first been interfaced with its travel machine. Drone travel machines were limited, their steering and navigation basic and slow, their weapons effective on most things but enjoying a lower yield than some others, their sensory hemispheres only effective at close range. That young Dalek could have been satisfied to have more, and considered that if it carried out its duty well then it could shrug off the silver and blue one day and have a much nicer casing. It endured many battles, exterminated many enemies of the Daleks and learned many useful things, and after a considerably long service as a drone it had been ordered to report to the Supreme Dalek to be upgraded to soldier. Normally drones only really did scientific work and rarely engaged in combat, but this young Dalek as a drone had been involved in a number of sieges carried out by human rebels in and around Serithia and as such had been forced to get some killing done. As a soldier, combat became its way of life and it enjoyed a more powerful weapon, better manoeuvring systems, better sensors and even tougher armour. It survived six campaigns and had an impressive list of victims when the Supreme Dalek ordered it to upgrade to the level of strategist. As a strategist it had turned the tide of a battle and as a spacecraft commander it had turned the tide of a war. All the time it had simply been obeying orders and using its intelligence. It was only natural that the now much older and more experienced Dalek should become a mission commander. The new travel machine it had been interfaced with was of excellent quality, its new colours marking out its rank, its hemispheres capable of detecting – and even fully analysing, identifying and predicting the level of – any threat at a range of five hundred metres, its gun capable of melting a starship's engine in as short a time as seventeen rels and its armour resistant even to the firepower of other Daleks. Daleks had wanted to kill each other before, back in the days of Davros. It handled well, too, and all in all it was worth having, along with the authority and power that came with being a mission commander. Daleks love power. But now, after all its long and distinguished service, Skaro was turning her back on it. It was not impressed. It was determined to prove to the Dalek Prime that it was better than that, worthy of a little more consideration. It decided finally that when the spacecraft landed it would go out and kill the Doctor itself in person, as it were. Then it could return to Skaro in glory, and all the Daleks would know it as the one who killed their greatest enemy. It would be the greatest Dalek.

It would be Emperor. And then it would punish the Dalek Prime.

The Dalek at the helm broke the Mission Commander's train of thought. "Our patrol has located the Doctor," it announced. "He accompanies the human females who have taken the compressor."

"The Doctor is not to be exterminated!" shrieked the Mission Commander. It was of vital importance that no other stole its glory. "He is to be captured."

The Helm Dalek swivelled its eye-stalk around as if unsure of what it had just heard. "Our orders are to exterminate the Doctor," it reminded its leader. "His capture at this point would have no value. Also if he is allowed to survive he may gain an opportunity to destroy us."

The Mission Commander was adamant. "There are other factors to be considered," it told its subordinate, merely fobbing it off. "New information has come to my attention."

"All significant data is to be relayed to Dalek Command, Serithia," said the Helm Dalek. "Where is your report?"

"Do not presume to give me orders!" the Mission Commander snapped. "Your words are mutiny. If you do not obey my commands I will exterminate you."

The Helm Dalek had no response to that. The Mission Commander could easily exterminate it with its high-yield weapon and there would be nothing that a mere pilot could do about it, its weapon inferior and surely ineffectual against that fabulous black and scarlet armour. "I obey," it said, but silently as it obeyed it transmitted a message on a secure frequency to the office of the Supreme Dalek, expressing its concerns about the strange behaviour of the Mission Commander.

The Dalek patrol was, unfortunately, too late in receiving its orders to actually capture the Doctor, as he had already gone into his TARDIS and taken his male companion and the thieving females with him. All they had was his female companion, and if they wanted the compressor they'd have to give her up. The Doctor watched the treacherous patrollers gathering outside his ship with Sarah kneeling in front of them, dazed and struggling to keep upright. "Give us the location of the compressor, Doctor!" the Patrol Leader ordered. "You are wasting time. We will give you only a further thirty rels."

"Rels?" asked Robin.

The Doctor was on his knees connecting cables to the underside of the console and glancing occasionally at the scanner above him. The cables ran to a metal frame sitting on the carpet beside his favourite armchair, packed with a motley collection of complex machine parts and leaking oil all over the attractive floor covering. He allowed a short breath to explain. "Dalek timescale," he quickly told Robin. "Just a fraction longer than a second."

"Thirty seconds?" Robin yelped.

"Thirty-eight," said the Doctor. "If you add the fractions together." He connected the last cable. "I think that should be it."

"It had better be," scowled Robin. "If anything happens to Sarah…"

The Doctor stood and stared Robin right in the face, startling and silencing him. "If anything happens to Sarah," he said, "then nothing you can possibly do to me will compare with the amount of torture I will inflict upon myself for the remainder of my life." He looked up at the scanner.

"What is your answer, Doctor?" demanded the Dalek. "You have ten rels left before I exterminate this female."

"All right," said the Doctor. "I'll give you the coordinates. I'll need to patch the location transmitter directly into your own navigational computers."

"A channel is open," said the Dalek. Stupid Daleks.

The Doctor slammed the lever down hard, grinning as the Daleks all screamed as one, their domed heads whizzing around and around as they lost control of their travel machines and started to bump into each other. Before Robin could ask what had happened, the Doctor was out of the door and back in again, carrying Sarah in his arms. He rushed to the armchair and lowered her gently into it, then he turned to Robin. "Safe and sound," he said. "Look after her."

"You have my word," Robin promised and knelt beside her.

The Doctor flung himself back onto the console dais and looked at the cluster of girls also surrounding the console. "I'm sorry about Harmony," he told them all. "We can't let her death be in vain. Where is that compressor?"

"What do you want it for?" asked Kirsten. "What good is it to us? We don't have enough power to use it to compress the DM for ourselves, let alone the means to ship the stuff anywhere afterwards. We only snatched it to hold the Daleks up, buy time for reinforcements to get here."

"Have you had any?"

"No."

"Then give me the compressor."

"What are you going to do with it?"

The Doctor was already adjusting the controls. "I'm going to give it back to the Daleks."

Kirsten was aghast. "You're what? You can't be serious."

The Doctor nodded firmly. "Of course I'm serious. Literally deadly serious."

"You're giving it back to those bastards?" Kirsten shrieked.

"Language," interjected Robin.

"After a few modifications," said the Doctor. There was a twinkle in his eye.

**IV**

**HEART OF THE MATTER**

"It's coming down."

Tago wasn't listening. He was watching the spectacle for himself. The disc-shaped craft was descending slowly, occasionally sweeping a wide beam of blue-white fire back and forth from its underside across the ground below, churning up the forestry and soil, leaving only dust and ashes, cutting a perfect circle to land on but also within the circle leaving a strange geometric pattern. Tago had always been interested in history and what he saw amazed him. "You know all those old stories from Old Earth about crop circles?" he asked anyone who might be listening.

A young staff sergeant answered. "My grandpa was really interested in those. He'd read every theory there was about how they were created."

"Not theory anymore, is it?" asked Tago. "Looks like the Daleks have known about Earth for a long time and even paid the odd visit throughout history."

The staff sergeant frowned. "Then how come we never heard of the Daleks?"

Tago shrugged. "Military embarrassments, cover-ups," he inferred. "Lost or destroyed records. There could be a lot of reasons. It's amazing how much history people don't know because the people of the time didn't want us to know." He glanced at the screen in front of him. "Okay it's down," he said as the Dalek ship settled onto its crop circle and the dust around it floated down in little clouds. He opened the turret hatch and climbed out, the four girl soldiers clambering as quickly as they could after him. They stayed away from the circle proper, hiding in the bushes. Two girls climbed up trees, each carrying a piece of equipment. They strapped them to the tree trunks as high up as they could while Tago and Steel set up a third item in a small leathery blue bush. The girls in the trees signalled that they were ready and climbed down while Tago set the mechanism. Then everyone got back into the MAARV and reversed it into the concealed tunnel with seconds to spare.

The door of the Dalek ship slid open and the access ramp unfurled, stretching until it touched the ground. Four soldier Daleks emerged, followed by the Mission Commander and four more. They spotted their aggressor immediately, a large, powerful-looking military vehicle. "There is another vehicle," the Mission Commander grated. "Destroy it."

The soldier Daleks opened fire. The MAARV exploded. The Daleks rolled on down the ramp and were surprised as another MAARV rolled into view. They fired on it and it was blown to pieces, but as they moved forward, a third appeared. They were about to open fire again, now much closer to the MAARV, when the Mission Commander gave a new order. "Wait." It scanned. "It is a deception. These vehicles are holograms." It located the projectors in the trees and lanced each in turn with a bolt from its weapon. The bits of projector crashed into the dirt and the fake MAARV dissolved, never to return. "Advance!" the Mission Commander ordered.

The Daleks did, and three of them were destroyed, a fourth damaged by the blast of the bomb that had been set up to solve the problem of them figuring out that they'd been tricked by the hologram projectors. The damaged Dalek was all right but a little disorientated, but the Mission Commander only had a small crew and was concerned that its personal retinue would not be adequate. "All Daleks report to the surface!" it commanded. The drones from the scanning section and the helm joined their leader and the second surface patrol marched.

"Now!" hissed Tago as two Daleks came into view.

The cannons discharged, and the damaged Dalek leading the patrol and the one beside it erupted into twin fireballs.

"Direct hit, sir!" the staff sergeant announced.

"Don't celebrate yet, Raeburn," Tago said sharply. "Let's survive this first." Two more Daleks took cover behind their torched comrades and fired back, aiming into the soil, following the source of the MAARV's beams. "That's our cover gone," Tago said as the last protective rocks were melted away to greyish goo. "Let's move."

The engines started up and the MAARV charged toward the Daleks, firing its cannons and flipping grenades into the air from its aftersection. There were bangs and flashes everywhere, clouds of dust and smoke, bits of Dalek going all over the place, but the metal monsters kept coming. A blast hit the MAARV and it shook. An alarm went off inside. "The engines have had it!" cried Steel. "And the blasters are almost out of power."

Tago nodded. "On three. One, two, three." He pressed a button.

"The vehicle has ceased its attack," announced the Mission Commander. "Exterminate!"

Dalek weapons burst into life, strafing the MAARV all over, chopping it up like a hot wire through cheese. The Mission Commander hadn't expected the machine's owners to overload its engines and only it and two other Daleks still stood after the tank exploded.

The Doctor disconnected the cable from the tall cylindrical unit that stood at the back of the cave and started to roll it up. "That should be good enough," he muttered as he vanished back inside his blue box. The soldiers watched him carefully until he was out of sight and then all looked at each other with a mixture of curiosity and doubt. Samantha Cort sidled up to Kirsten and kept her voice low. "Can we really trust this guy?" she asked, nodding toward the box to indicate that she meant the Doctor. "I'm not sure about this whole idea of giving the Daleks what they want."

Kirsten let out a long, heavy sigh. "He's all we've got at the moment," she whispered back. "And he seems one step ahead of the Daleks so far."

"He hasn't killed one yet, though, has he?" Samantha sounded anxious. "This could all be for show, some sort of trap. I know he stunned them all earlier so we could escape, but maybe they arranged that with him? They even admitted to recognising him."

"Yeah, as a sworn enemy," Kirsten reminded her comrade and friend. "For God's sake, Sam! What the hell would the Daleks have to gain from using this guy to trick us?"

Samantha pointed at the compressor. "That."

Kirsten was worried.

There was a tense atmosphere as Robin emerged with Sarah-Jane. Sarah was fine now, the atmosphere of the TARDIS helping her to convalesce, and she walked upright and behaved as though nothing had happened, though anyone looking closely enough could see that she didn't feel at all comfortable with her situation. Robin trotted over to Kirsten, a little red-faced. "Sorry about earlier," he muttered with embarrassment that he couldn't hide.

Kirsten blushed a little too. "Wasn't your fault," she smiled awkwardly. "Bloody Daleks. We could have another go later if you want."

"If we get out of this," Robin chuckled humourlessly.

Sarah popped her head between them. "Do you mind?" she huffed. "This is a war zone, not a speed-dating party." She scowled at Kirsten. "I don't know how you can degrade yourself like this, in front of everyone!"

Robin almost did a double-take. "Oh, thank you very much!" he spluttered. "I don't recall you ever finding sleeping with me particularly degrading, or am I losing my senses in my old age?"

"It wasn't meant like that," Sarah replied grumpily. "Yes, we did have our fair share of intimate moments, but I never threw myself at you like a lovestruck teenager. We both behaved like sensible adults and had a sensible relationship, even though a lot of it was fun." She pointed an accusing finger at Kirsten. "But this one is behaving like a trollop just because she hasn't seen an eligible male in goodness knows how long!" She rounded on Robin again. "And you were encouraging her. Don't think I'd be naïve enough not to know what the two of you were doing in that tent before the Daleks attacked."

Robin frowned at her. "Is this jealousy?" he snapped. "Is that what this is? Nice looking girl, half your age, bust twice your size, takes a bit of a shine to your ex and suddenly she's a tart?"

"No, it bloody well isn't!" Sarah growled indignantly. "It's the fact that this woman is supposed to be a soldier in the middle of a war and she might get us all killed because she's got the sex drive of a teenager and can't think about anything more important than getting her end away!" She was back on Kirsten again. "Doesn't your Alliance encourage women to have self-respect?"

Kirsten was blushing almost puce. She was a little shaken by Sarah's reaction to her dalliance with Robin. "Look, I'm really sorry," she said sincerely. "Our Alliance encourages survival mainly, and our survival's a bit of a hard ride right now. The economy isn't looking too good and there'll be nothing left for us but a life at the level of savages if we can't sort it out. Most of the men in the Alliance died in the last war, slaughtered in battle with the Nuridians, and with all the men away at war there wasn't anyone to get the women pregnant either. Most boys were conscripted, some as young as fourteen, only their sisters and younger brothers left at home, and when their little brothers got older they got drafted too. In the wake of the war only the little sisters were left to grow up, and as they did they took over government positions that there were no men to fill. Yeah, we had a few men left, but they were either crippled by war or too old for the most part. The tiny handful of fertile lads we had were allowed to have as many as sixteen wives at a time and also expected to make sperm donations for women who couldn't find a man to marry, just to get the number of pregnancies up and increase the population. We're nowhere near our target and if we don't make more people and more revenues then we're all going to die in poverty and misery." The soldier looked genuinely sad. "I don't want that. Nobody wants that." She turned away. Over her shoulder she added, "There weren't many guys left to put in the defence forces either, which is why most soldiers these days are women. Before the war it was always a man's life, the army. Please don't blame us for having to do what men do and acting like them because of it."

"I'm sorry," Sarah said quietly, putting a hand gently on Kirsten's shoulder. "I didn't realise how bad it was. People on your worlds must suffer terribly."

Kirsten turned back to her. "The Dark Matter can save us. There's enough spaceship fuel in the core of this planet to practically buy a whole new economy. We can trade it out at top price around the galaxy, make enough to refloat the Alliance Interplanetary Bank and really make a go of it. And boys are being born now, loads of boys. They'll grow into men and start evening up the numbers as their mums get too old to have any more kids and then the young men and women will have children and the new generation of the Alliance can go forward."

The Doctor had reappeared from the TARDIS. "You can go a lot further than that," he said. "I've just been having a look at some star charts and the orbital path of this planet. Were you aware that Blackheart isn't part of the Guy System? It's one of six planets orbiting a star slightly further out."

"A new solar system?" Kirsten gasped.

"Possibly a step toward becoming the Six Systems Alliance," the Doctor nodded. "And the other planets have quite some potential, though you really will need the Dark Matter if you're going to be able to afford such a leap."

A hand grabbed his arm and he felt the nose of a gun in his side. "Then why are you giving it to the Daleks?" demanded Samantha Cort. "What the hell kind of game are you playing?"

"I'm not playing games with you," the Doctor replied, and in a sudden flurry of movement he was gone.

In the time it took Samantha to blink the positions had switched and the Doctor was jamming her gun into her back this time. "You're gonna kill me?" she laughed bitterly. "Go on then. Show your true colours. Prove once and for all that you're a Dalek agent."

The Doctor stepped back toward the TARDIS, covering Samantha with the gun. "None of you move," he snapped. Everyone froze.

Sarah was horrified. "Doctor!" she spluttered. "What are you doing?"

"I'm sorry, Sarah," the Doctor replied sadly, sounding as though his hearts were about to fall to pieces in tandem. "I can't let the Dark Matter fall into the hands of those who are too irresponsible to use it correctly." He sidestepped clear of the TARDIS.

The doors opened and eight Daleks glided out, a black one with vivid red hemispheres – the boss Dalek – and five others that were probably the patrol the Doctor had scrambled earlier, plus a couple perhaps from the spaceship. "Acquire the compressor!" the Dalek with the red hemispheres ordered. "Exterminate these humans."

"That wasn't the agreement!" growled the Doctor. "We've given you the compressor and you promised to let us all go."

"All agreements are void," the beastly black Dalek retorted. "The compressor is ours. None of these humans has any value."

Kirsten pointed her rifle at the Doctor. "You two-faced, evil bastard traitor!" she shrieked. She cocked the weapon and the hard click of the mechanism was followed by the whistle of power-up.

A Dalek whirled round to face her. "Exterminate!" it cried, aiming its weapon.

Nothing happened.

Kirsten tried to shoot it and nothing happened for her either. She looked up, her face pale. "What the hell's going on?"

The Doctor threw the gun he had taken from Samantha Cort on the floor. "I had a feeling the Daleks would kill us anyway once they had the compressor, so I extended the state of temporal grace usually restricted to the TARDIS and its occupants to cover this entire cave."

Sarah knew about that. "Eldrad…" she said quietly.

The Doctor nodded. "I repaired the circuitry recently, having noticed a fault some time ago and just taken my time getting around to it." He looked at Robin and the soldiers, all appearing confused and none the wiser. "Weapons don't work in a state of temporal grace. The Daleks can't harm us and we can't harm them. Now everyone, into the TARDIS."

Everyone started to move, except Samantha. "You're still giving them the compressor!" she roared at the Doctor. "They'll get this planet and we'll get nothing. You're condemning the whole Alliance!"

"Get in," snapped Kirsten. "We'll take it up with the Doctor later." And she frogmarched her comrade inside.

The Doctor led them all through the console room. "Now, if you'll step this way I'll show you something that'll put all your minds at ease." Bewildered and unsure of what to do, the soldiers marched almost somnolently behind him. He passed through a door and ushered them along a corridor to another door. He opened it and led them all through.

Samantha Cort looked up in astonishment. "Oh Doctor," she said as tears welled in her eyes. "I'm so sorry…" Her mistrust, suspicion and malice forgotten, she gripped the Time Lord, wrapped her arms around him and sobbed into his lapels with a mixture of joy, relief and more importantly gratitude.

"I forgive you," the Doctor said quietly.

"I could kiss you," breathed Kirsten.

The room they had entered was a massive cube, its walls lined with long glowing strips that were obviously some sort of gravitational suspension system, at the heart of which hung a black ball big enough to be in itself a small planetoid. The core of Blackheart.

Robin gulped. "How the hell did you do that?"

The Doctor admired the rough sphere. "While you were looking after Sarah, and these soldiers were resting, I nipped to the secondary control room and took the TARDIS on a slight detour," he explained with some self-satisfaction. "I used the advanced technology of my own people to transpose the planet's core into this room – things like this are child's play to Time Lords – and then I went and collected the Daleks. I didn't tell them I had the core but I tricked them into believing they had the upper plunger, as it were. I allowed myself to be captured, the Mission Commander as usual threatened to exterminate me but I told him I'd give him the compressor if he agreed to let us all leave in the TARDIS. I knew he'd agree, thinking that he could grab the compressor and exterminate me anyway, but the Daleks weren't banking on the state of grace being extendible beyond the confines of the TARDIS's outer shell."

Sarah was glowing. "So you gave them back the compressor because you knew it'd be completely useless, because there's nothing left for them to compress!"

"Ah," the Doctor grimaced. "It's a little bit worse than useless." He turned to Kirsten. "You're pregnant," he said. "It's Robin's, and it'll be a girl."

Kirsten squeaked. "What?"

"Oh God," gasped Robin. "Really?"

The Doctor nodded. "No doubt about it."

Robin looked at Kirsten. "I'll stay," he said. "I'll come home with you, help you raise our child."

Kirsten shook her head. "I can't put you through that life. We're going to take a long time getting on our feet and you'd be poor for the rest of your days."

"I'd accept it for the sake of my family," Robin promised.

"We're not a family," Kirsten sobbed, putting her hand on his wrist gently. "No matter what we might want. And please don't ask me to come with you on your travels. That's no life for a child either."

"Come home with me," Robin suggested. "Where I come from we're more-or-less economically stable and I've the means to support a child."

Kirsten shook her head. "Robin, I've a duty to my own people. They need this kid for their own population building and they need me to make more while I'm fertile. You can't be my only sire, but I'm glad you were my first." She kissed his cheek.

The Doctor turned to her as she broke away from Robin. "Volunteer for the pioneer flight into the new solar system and have your baby there," he smiled. "They'll name the system after her, which will be nice even though it'll be a planet short."

"A planet short?" echoed Kirsten. "How?"

"The compressor," the Doctor told her. "The Daleks are in for quite a shock when they try to test it on a planet that they don't realise has no core."

In space, the planet Blackheart imploded, flattened almost to a singularity by the overload of the Daleks' compressor coupled with a massive discharge of energy of an unknown type delivered into its power systems from an unknown source. The Daleks, of course, were crushed along with it, and the last message of the Mission Commander only just made it to the Supreme Dalek on Serithia. The Dalek Prime would have to be told, of course, and it would not be happy, but this was something it would just have to chalk up to experience.

The Elisabeth System was founded one year later under the flag of the Six Systems Alliance.

**Dedicated with fondest affection to the memory of  
>ELISABETH SLADEN<strong>

**1948-2011**

_**Our Sarah-Jane**_

_**This is the third in the series of adventures featuring the Eighth Doctor that began with POLARITY and continued in THE BEAST THAT PLAYED WITH DOLLS. A new adventure in this series will be available soon.**_


End file.
